Fire in the Attic

No worries; the fire was in the distant past.

The son of the third owner told us that there had been a fire in the attic in the middle of last century.  Occasionally we see evidence of it.  Here's another surprising piece of evidence.

This is the jamb for the attic door after I removed the stop so we could experiment with getting stuff up the stairs.  Surprisingly, there was still soot between the jamb and the stop.  It's fascinating to me that it could get in there - the paint in the joint between the two pieces of wood wasn't really cracked.  In fact, I had doubts as to whether the stop was applied or part of the same piece of wood (most of the the other stops in the house are NOT applied molding...).

We're not planning to re-install the door; going without will help air circulation with the new secondary HVAC system.

As a result I have some filling and sanding to do to this jamb...